By IANS
Thiruvananthapuram : The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) has cleared six pilot projects in six states to enhance income generation of people working in the unorganised sector.
The projects will be implemented in Kerala, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Assam, the commission chairperson Arjun Sen Gupta told reporters here Saturday.
The projects propose to develop clusters, integrate the already existing clusters and help in identifying marketing opportunities for products from the unorganised sector.
In Kerala, the project will be implemented in Kollam, some 70 km from here.
“We decided to select Kollam because it has a large number of small and micro enterprises from the cashew, coir, marine and has a huge potential for tourism related activities,” commission member K.P. Kannan said.
“The cost of the pilot project at Kollam is around Rs.1.5 billion ($37.8 million) and would be shared between the state and central governments, private sector and other financial institutions,” he added.
“A detailed project report for the six projects is getting ready and we expect that within one year the work will begin,” Gupta said.
According to a survey by the commission, 77 percent of the country’s population has not benefited from the economic growth and they belong to the unorganised sector.
“The basic premise is that globalisation, expansion of market forces and the arrival of foreign capital have all become realities and 92 percent of the total workforce in the country from the unorganised sector do not have social security schemes. We plan to give them some sort of sops for health care and even a pension through provident fund,” Gupta said.
Gupta and Kannan were in Kerala to have a first hand idea of the Kollam pilot project.